All I Know Now
by eshkaliot
Summary: AU: What if Maura were a robot?
1. Chapter 1

Mid-January, on the helipad of Boston's Central Hospital: Jane Rizzoli was freezing, even in her parka, and it looked like snow was rolling in, clouds darkening the already somber late afternoon sky. She hugged herself, hunched her shoulders, and stamped her feet, trying to keep warm. She couldn't believe she was up here, but that was the job, right? She sighed, thinking of what her job used to consist of: the thrill of the chase, the rush of catching a murderer. The conviction of being on the right side. Diplomacy, with its duplicitous smiles and complicated social dances, was just not for her. But then, when the mayor of the city asks you to be robot-human liaison, you don't really turn her down. Jane thought back ruefully to the day two weeks ago when an envelope plump with important forms and encrusted with the city's crest had landed on her desk, as though that were the moment it had begun. As if the path to standing alone on the room of the hospital had started in the moment when she opened the envelope. As if it hadn't been in the works ever since the Screwtape Incident a month ago.

It's not that she distrusts the mayor, or is unaware of the honor; Jane just really doesn't like robots. Doesn't trust them. Thinks it's weird that they've taken over a country for their own use. She's young enough that she doesn't really remember Integration, or the war that swept the continent when she was two years old. During that war, the first to truly divide robots from their human creators, a treaty had been signed that allowed robots the run of what is still pretty much known as Canada. Not much blood had been shed then, but the robots made it clear: they were separate, equal, and deserved their own society. The potential remained for violence between robots and humans, Jane suspected darkly, and that was why she'd been appointed. The higher-ups wanted someone with experience in this position, someone who didn't trust the robots, not one bit. For as long as Jane can remember, robots have been the dark side, the shadow world. Those who remained in America after Disintigration were officially registered as Rogue Robots, resident aliens with a twist. It was rare that they stayed for any constructive purpose; in her former job as homicide detective (Jane thought with a bit of nostalgia) Jane's main interaction with robots had been as perps. There was no executing robots; they were put in deep freeze and sent back to Canada, where the robot government did god-knows-what with them. The robots hated America, and Jane Rizzoli hated the robots.

It was ironic, in a way, that she'd been chosen for this job. Kind of showed you that robot-human interactions weren't really the government's top priority at the moment, but there you were: Jane was possibly the least diplomatic person she knew, and she had a fierce temper. She was sure to screw this mission up. It almost made her wish for reinforcements, for other humans alongside her on the helipad, waiting for the mysterious robot doctor to arrive, but they were all inside. Curing the disease.

That was another thing that made her nervous. This virus wasn't of human origin, of that she was pretty much certain, although she knew less than nothing (she had to admit) about virology, plagues, biological warfare, whatever this was. All she knew was that suspicious deaths had started popping up on her radar a couple weeks back, deaths that, when she went to investigate, weren't human in origin. The victims looked like they'd been abused: some had fractured bones; many had nosebleeds, or blood in their ears, as if they'd suffered head trauma. But when the reports came back from the lab, they described a strange virus that liquified human bones, that ultimately went for the brain. Victims went mad, basically, from the pain; their bones fractured and disintegrated while they were still alive, and their soft tissues tore themselves apart. It was unlike anything human doctors had encountered before. Worse still, it was an unfocused killer; it seemed to go through periods of dormancy, where almost no new victims were infected, but there was the odd case that was so infectious it could take out an entire city block in under a week. There was no human who would have engineered this unless they themselves had a serious death wish. Robots, of course, were immune to it, and they had motive: a century of resentment against their human overlords had not quite dissipated even now that they had their own country.

Thinking about it now, Jane shivered herself. If there was anything she hated, it was something she couldn't control. This virus might not have a human form, but it was a killer for sure, one that Jane couldn't lock up and put away forever. It reduced her to trusting on another person to find the answers. Not just another person: a robot. A cold, untrustworthy, mechanical creep who was surely just being sent to cover up for the robot government's war against their human enemies. It was a Trojan horse, and not one they could refuse, not with the dead piling up and the human scientists still at a loss for a cure.

But this sort of rumination was not helpful, Jane chastised herself, tilting her head back once again and searching the skies for any sign of a helicopter. In preparation for the doctor's landing, she should try to focus, center herself, think positive things about the robots. She was going to have to work with one, after all. Her boss had explicitly told her that her job for the next week, month, whatever it took, was to watch this doctor: to make sure he was comfortable, and that he had everything she needed to make his job run smoothly. This task would be much easier if she were in the right frame of mind, Jane knew, and so she rehearsed again how she wanted this first meeting to go: the greetings she would use, the carefully neutral-yet-welcoming face she would put on. All she had to do today was to take the doctor to his hotel; that wasn't so hard. She could give a whirlwind tour of Boston on the way, despite the fact that her home city had been ravished by the plague, its streets emptied and its buildings neglected. She felt a flush of pride at her city as it once had been, and then the slow boil of resentment. The robots wouldn't appreciate the beauty of Boston, even if it were restored to its former glory. They were cold things, Jane thought, just cold pieces of metal and plastic and silicone. Not people. Not something she could negotiate with, or ever understand.

It was worse that she didn't know anything about the doctor who was coming, not even his name. Jane cursed the higher-ups who had rushed her briefing, telling her where and when to show up but not much else. Then again, it was possible that they didn't know either; the robot government had always been rather reticent with details. Not telling the human government the name of an important robot visitor seemed like just the kind of tomfoolery they would get up to: keep them off-balance, so they're even less prepared to deal with the robots. "I'll just look like an idiot," Jane muttered to herself. What was she supposed to say? "Hi, they didn't tell me who you were." It felt like she was being punished for crimes she hadn't committed, and the weather was co-operating, the cold biting through her parka with the sharpness of a thousand knives. She'd grown up in Boston, she should be used to the weather, but today was the coldest she could remember Boston ever being.

It was almost dark by now. Jane gave in and stripped her glove off, flexing her fingers to keep them from freezing while pushing her sleeve back so she could see her watch. It was nearly four o'clock; the doctor was over an hour late. (Weren't robots supposed to be exact and scientific?) She amused herself by thinking up potential names for the doctor. Albert? George? How did robots even get names, anyway? Were they assigned at birth―as they were pushed off a conveyor belt? By whom? Were robots born adult-sized? How many robots were assembled a year in order to replace those who broke or wore out? Jane didn't know the answers to any of these questions, she realized. She was remarkably ill-equipped to act as robot-human liaison.

Her reverie―the swirl of storm clouds on the horizon was almost hypnotizing at this point―was broken by the faint sound of an approaching motor. She squinted; out of the clouds was emerging a black dot that looked like it might be a helicopter. Jane straightened up, brushed some ice crystals from her hair, and was grateful that it hadn't quite started snowing yet. The racket of the helicopter increased until it drowned out the howl of the wind.

The helicopter touched down, and Jane braced herself against the draft, squinting to see who would emerge. All she could see was the pilot, bundled up and talking into his headset; she couldn't tell if he was robot or human, although there was no reason for his muffler and down jacket if he was a robot. There was a moment of silence, broken only by the slowly spinning blades of the helicopter, and then the door opened and a ladder was dropped out. A leg descended, clothed in impeccably tailored trousers and concluding in a stiletto-heeled, leather boot, and connected with the first rung. There was a pause as its owner re-calibrated its balance, and then a body followed, clad in a light jacket belted at the waist, and a head crowned with perfect, dirty-blonde hair. The doctor was in the shape of a woman, and a very attractive woman. Jane found herself swallowing nervously before crossing the tarmac to extend her hand. At the last minute she decided to take her glove off, which made her a second late to meet the hand the doctor extended in response. A tiny, pained smile appeared on that preternaturally flawless skin (it's not skin, she reminded herself, it's some kind of composite plastic thing), and Jane broke out in a flop sweat despite the cold.

"Jane Rizzoli," she said, trying to recover. Flashing a smile of her own. "Nice to meet you." (She hoped the robot couldn't tell it was a total lie.) "And you are?"

The woman took her sunglasses off, fixed Jane in her intense gaze. "They did not tell you my name? Very well. I am Doctor Maura Isles." Her handshake was firm, precise, her speech quiet but focused. She didn't seem to pick up on the fact that Jane loathed her on principle; in fact, she didn't seem to pick up on anything about Jane at all. She might as well be a lump of ice for all Doctor Isles cared, Jane grumped to herself, but she forced herself to be polite.

"Do you have a bag I can take, Dr. Isles?"

Again there was a flash of those eyes. "All I need is in this briefcase."

"I'm sorry, I was given to understand that you were undertaking extremely sophisticated inquiry into the nature of this disease," Jane said, a little bitterly. If this is all the robots could think to send, why even bother?

"Your point being?" Doctor Isles' voice was level.

"I thought you'd bring a little more equipment."

The doctor smiled quietly again, but avoided Jane's question. "Your hand is extremely cold; we should go inside as quickly as possible." Only then did she drop Jane's hand and turn to go inside, looking regal. Jane hurried ahead of her to open the door; she could feel the helicopter starting up again behind her, leaving her alone with this...robot. She followed Doctor Isles into the warmth of the hospital.


	2. Chapter 2

The hospital was fuller than usual, and the atmosphere was tense. Dr. Isles' lab was, of course, in the heart of the plague ward, which was cordoned off from the rest of the hospital. As the monitor checked their credentials and unlocked the door to let them in, Jane felt a shiver go down her spine, as if someone were watching her go into this forbidden place, but when she turned around there was nobody there.

They walked down the hall side by side, Dr. Isles looking as cool and unruffled as if she were walking from the living room to the kitchen. Jane, unused to the hospital atmosphere and set on edge by the dozens of rooms filled with victims (thankfully sedated), was taken aback by the other woman's composure, until she remembered that Dr. Isles was actually a robot. It was probably a good thing, she thought to herself, sighing: any person who could look that calm in the face of the plague had probably suffered some kind of trauma. Or was a total psychopath. At the same time, though, it was creepy how perfect she was. Jane watched the doctor out of the corner of her eye, noting her even stride, the perfectly calibrated sway of her hips that betrayed the speed with which the robot walked. It was incredible that anyone could walk that fast in heels, Jane thought to herself, but she was in pretty good shape herself and she increased her pace until she was again walking side by side with the robot.

After a moment, Dr. Isles cleared her throat (why did she do that? how did she do that?) and asked Jane, wryly, "What are you looking at?"

"Oh! Um, nothing. I mean, sorry." Jane blushed deeply, first out of embarrassment and confusion and then out of anger at the smirk on the doctor's face. "Uh, your office should be just around this corner..."

"I know. I memorized the map."

"So what do you need me for?" At that the doctor stopped, turned to look directly at Jane.

"You were sent to meet me. It's polite to accept the hospitality of your hosts. I am known for being polite; that's part of the reason I was sent."

"Really?" said Jane, extremely dubious; Dr. Isles was one of the most brusque people-sorry, robots-she'd ever met.

"I am in your government's building, using their equipment. I am respecting their wishes." With that, she turned to the door of the lab, which was now in front of them. "Would you mind letting me in?"

Jane fumbled the key card, still distracted by this insight into the doctor's thought processes, but finally she unlocked the automatic door and the lab lay before them. When Dr. Isles stepped forward, Jane could have sworn there was a change in her, something about her posture (which had been impeccable) or her aura, or something: she looked at home, if a robot could be said to have a home. Jane stood nervously by the door as Dr. Isles explored the lab, unsure of whether or not she should go.

"Um, can I take you to your hotel? It's getting late..." Jane was sorry she'd spoken; the doctor stopped what she was doing and fixed Jane with a perplexed stare.

"I won't be going to any hotel. I am staying here, in the lab."

Jane was taken aback. "Why? I mean, where?"

"There should be an office in this lab; I have asked for a cot to be placed there. Not," she said, turning away, "that it's any of your business."

"Right," Jane muttered, trying to stifle her questions: did robots need to sleep? If Dr. Isles was trying to be polite, why had she explicitly refused the government's hospitality? Why had nobody told her that Dr. Isles wouldn't be staying at a hotel? None of these were really things she thought she could politely ask the doctor, however. She had just opted for saying nothing when the lights flickered and went out. Almost immediately, Dr. Isles retrieved a flashlight from her briefcase and turned it on, giving the lab an eerie, haunted feel.

"It must be the storm," said Jane. "The power should come back on soon, the backup generators at least." They waited for several minutes in the gathering silence, however, Jane all too aware of the sound of her breathing alone in the room until she noticed that Dr. Isles made a very faint, almost undetectable hum, as if she were a computer whose processor was functioning correctly. It was reassuring, in a way, and Jane found herself holding her breath so that she could hear it, but then the light was moving, and she could hear Dr. Isles' heels clicking quietly across the tile, and then Dr. Isles was standing right next to Jane, the flashlight pointed tactfully down at the floor.

"I don't think the power is coming back on," she said, her voice surprisingly soft in the silence. Without the distraction of background noise, Jane could appreciate the nuances of the robot's voice: it was slightly gravelly, as though she didn't often speak. Again Jane had to remind herself that what she was hearing was not actually a human talking, only the approximation of one.

"You may be right."

"What would you suggest doing?"

"What, you need my ideas?" Even in the dark Jane could feel Dr. Isles' reproachful glance. "Okay. Well...let's wait a little while, see if the lights come back on."

"Okay." The doctor was silent for a moment, but she didn't move away from Jane, who was racking her brain trying to think of acceptable things to talk about. She couldn't talk about the robot's upbringing, because she wasn't totally sure what that consisted of in robots; she didn't have any idea what a robot would want to do in her free time. Besides, she was worried that personal questions would sound rude at this early point in their (hopefully brief) relationship.

"What do you think is going on with this plague?"

"You mean A99?"

"What?"

"A99 is the ICD classification of unspecified viral haemorrhagic fever, which is what this appears to be."

"I have no idea what that means."

"It's a code, Ms. Rizzoli. It means we don't know what's causing it."

"Oh." Jane is quiet for a minute. "When do you think you'll know?"

"I have no idea." The doctor's voice, which had been stern before, softened a little bit, and she laid a hand on Jane's arm. They were quiet for a while, and then she spoke again, her voice returning to its usual formality. "We should get you out of here, Ms. Rizzoli. If the power is completely out, and I believe it is, the ventilation will have ceased and you may have trouble getting adequate oxygen." Jane had trouble responding for a second; she was distracted by Dr. Isles' hand on her arm. When she said nothing, Dr. Isles pressed her arm delicately, as if she had performed tests to see exactly how much pressure a human arm could take, how much felt good. "Ms. Rizzoli? Are you all right?"

At this question Jane jumped, came back to herself. "Yes! Yes, I'm fine!" She pulled herself away from the doctor as if shocked, turned towards where she thought the doors were. "If you...shine the light over here, I'll try and open the doors." She began feeling for the crack without waiting for the doctor's reply, but after a moment the flashlight's beam illuminated the lab's door. Jane put her weight into pulling the door apart from its mate, but she had no luck, which was strange: she was strong, and the doors were designed to be pushed open in a crisis. She turned to Dr. Isles to comment on this fact, but before she realized what was happening the doctor was beside her again, this time reaching past her to place small hands next to Jane's. Jane had just enough time to pull her arms away from where they were entangled in the doctor's before the robot was pushing, and then the door was creaking reluctantly, and some imperfection in the track was snapping, and the doors were rolling back and air rolled into the lab, cool against Jane's flushed skin.

"Thank you," she said after a minute, and, in the darkness, she could hear Dr. Isles respond quietly,

"It was not a problem." If she hadn't known better, Jane would have said that the robot was breathing hard, but of course she wasn't breathing at all.

They were silent for a long moment, standing there in the half-dark facing each other, and then Jane spoke again. "Well, I guess...I'll go see if I can find out what's happening with the power in this place."

"I will come with you," Dr. Isles responded smoothly, and for once Jane didn't bother questioning the doctor's impulses; she was mostly glad that she would have Dr. Isles with her if she needed to open any more stuck doors. After a second she realized what she was thinking and was shocked at herself. "I want to complain to the management about this door," Dr. Isles continued. "You should have been able to open it yourself. I am a robot trained for science; I am not intended for acts involving brute strength. I might have broken a finger." With that she walked out the door, paused for a moment as if consulting a mental map, and turned left. Jane hurried to follow her.

The plague ward was even creepier in the darkness than it had been earlier in the day, although there was still almost no noise from the patients. As they walked on, they could hear a low keening coming from one of the rooms, as though one of the affected had been startled awake, but after a moment there was the murmur of a comforting voice-probably a nurse, Jane thought-and the keening ceased. It felt, after that voice faded, as if they were walking through a graveyard, the intense sedation the patients were under becoming a kind of simulated death. If it wasn't death itself, it was certainly its precursor, this long, troubled sleep: most of the patients in this ward had only a few days left to live. Many of them would never wake up again.

"It is a tragedy," said Dr. Isles, her voice echoing, as though she had been reading Jane's thoughts. That was the only thing she said until they had passed out of the ward and into the main hospital.

"Where do you think we should go?" Jane asked her.

"Perhaps we should go see the director of the hospital," Dr. Isles said after a moment. "I believe her office is on the second floor." She turned toward the stairway on their right, and Jane followed.

She walked behind the robot, and this time she was grateful for the dark; she could not see anything of the doctor. She was beginning to get a headache from the confusion the doctor inspired in her. On the one hand, she was annoyed by the doctor's precise, bland affect, but on the other hand she was fascinated. And there was no denying that absurd reaction she'd had to the doctor's touch back in the lab. If only she knew what it meant. In the dark, she didn't have to look at the doctor, or worry about the blush that had started rising as soon as Dr. Isles had stepped up behind her and leaned forward to put her weight into pushing the door open. She listened to the sound of the doctor's high heels on the floor, and let herself be hypnotized by it.

As they stepped out of the stairwell onto the second floor, however, the lights flickered on. Dr. Isles sighed a sigh that was not exactly satisfied, but continued walking towards the director's office.

"What are you doing?" Jane said. "The power's come back on."

"I know," said the doctor over her shoulder, "but I still want to ask about that door."

"Okay," said Jane. "But I'm going home."

At that Dr. Isles stopped and turned around, and fixed Jane with the full power of her stare. "Why?"

"Because it's late, and I'm very tired, and I find this hospital creepy." As soon as she said it Jane knew she would regret it later, but the doctor simply shrugged and turned away.

"Very well. Have a good night, Ms. Rizzoli."

A/N: Sorry for the slow update! It's the middle of the semester and I probably won't be able to update any more frequently than this, but I hope to get through all ten planned chapters before Christmas. :)


	3. Chapter 3

When Jane got to work the next day, there was a message on her desk from her boss: "What are you doing? Go check on your visitor." Grumbling to herself about people who only communicated via post-it note, and about the necessity of spending more time with that stuck-up, frigid, inhuman robot, Jane crumpled up the post-it and tossed it in the garbage on her way out the door.

The hospital was within walking distance of city hall, which was where Jane was working for now. It seemed strange to her, working in city hall, and not just because she still sometimes automatically drove to police headquarters in the morning. There was an improvised plaque on her door, and her office had a musty smell that told her it had recently been a storage room. The position of human-robot liaison had clearly not had a long existence. Jane had a sneaking suspicion that it had been created to keep her out of trouble, which was both insulting and baffling.

There was nobody, however, that she trusted enough to ask about the position's history, and her boss was unreachable, communicating through post-it notes when it was necessary to communicate at all. She'd only laid eyes on the man once, on her first day, when he'd come personally to show her around the building. It was an honor that had not been repeated. Jane had spent the month before this...situation with Dr. Isles had arisen bored and tense at the desk that was crammed awkwardly into her small office, or working off energy at the gym down the street, or discreetly putting in calls to her former colleagues at the PD.

After about a week, though, when it became clear that this change was not due to simple clerical error, the detectives had stopped filling her in on cases. A couple days later, the gym had closed down—because of the plague, Jane assumed—leaving her with no outlet for her mental or physical energy. It was almost nice to get outside after the weeks of stultifying boredom. (Although now that she actually had to interact with a robot she realized that there were hundreds of questions she wanted answered, questions she could have spent the previous weeks researching.) Jane stepped out of city hall into the frigid air.

It had stopped snowing in the night, and the sky was bright. The sun assaulted her eyes, bouncing off surfaces newly covered with snow, and Jane fumbled with a gloved hand for the sunglasses that had burrowed deep into an outside pocket of her coat. A plow truck rumbled down the street next to her, muffled by a layer of snow that had not yet melted into slush. Every time Jane saw an example of the still-functioning infrastructure of the city, she had to be thankful that the plague hadn't completely shut everything down yet.

There were, however, not very many people on the street. Those who had ventured out were wearing masks in addition to their winter coats and scarves, and they kept a wide berth from each other. The effect was almost inhuman, as if lumps of clothing had come to life and were drifting around Boston. Fear of infection, combined with the usual need for protection from the cold, combined to paint a picture of a populace that seemed increasingly inhuman and alienated from itself. It was a thought that made her think, oddly enough, of the doctor: her perfect assurance, her polished appearance. Her willingness to touch Jane; she wasn't afraid of the plague. Jane thought suddenly and with something like longing of the doctor's limbs entangled in hers the night before, when the doctor had stepped forward to open the stuck doors to the lab. It had been a long time since she had touched another person.

Jane was so lost in thought that she walked past the entrance of the hospital and had to double back. She presented her ID to a guard stationed by the stairs and waited as he crossed her name off some kind of list before heading up to the fourth floor, where she spent some time wandering around before she found the plague ward, its doors firmly locked and manned by a guard dressed in a Hazmat suit. He examined Jane's ID, then gave her a curt nod and unlocked the door.

She had been worried that she would be lost once she got there—she'd only spent half an hour on this floor, and most of it had been with the lights out—but to her surprise she remembered pretty well how to get to Dr. Isles' laboratory. The rest of the hospital had felt almost normal, if a little tense; there were doctors and nurses walking around, and a handful of people with what appeared to be ordinary ailments. The plague ward was eery. There was nobody to be seen in the halls, but every so often Jane passed rooms that appeared to be full to the brim with patients in varying stages of intense torment. The medical profession had been reduced to providing palliative care, and for the most part patients were sedated, giving the hall an eery silence. Every once in a while, though, there was a scream, or a moan, that reminded you of the pain just below the surface. Jane walked quickly, trying not to look around her, until she reached the lab.

The lights, through the frosted glass doors, appeared to be dim. She wondered for a moment whether Dr. Isles was asleep—resting—hibernating—whatever it was that she did at night. There were noises coming from within the lab, though, and it was her job to meet with Dr. Isles this morning. Taking a deep breath, Jane pushed the button to open the doors and entered the lab.

There was nobody there except for Dr. Isles, who at that moment appeared to be engaged in adjusting something that looked like a very large, very complicated microscope. Boxes lay open on the counters around her. Her hands, which had operated with such strength the night before, moved almost tenderly over the instrument. Jane stood looking at the doctor for a moment, admiring the skill that went into those almost-imperceptible movements, before some slight movement she made alerted the doctor to her presence. In a microsecond, Dr. Isles' hands left the microscope and she straightened up, with a look of surprise on her face that dissolved into her usual impassive expression when she recognized the detective.

"Good morning, Ms. Rizzoli," she said coolly. "Can I help you with something today?"

Jane cleared her throat, unconsciously wringing her hands together. "Dr. Isles. Just checking in. I wanted to make sure...you'd settled in..." she winced internally, but there was no way around the awkwardness of asking a robot whether it—she—was comfortable.

"I am very well, thank you," said Dr. Isles, turning back towards the microscope as though she wanted to return to making adjustments. Ten minutes ago, Jane would have said she was only looking forward to getting out of the robot's presence, and it was true that every interaction they'd had so far—including this one—had been hopelessly awkward. Furthermore, she still found the idea of a chunk of silicon and wires walking around and talking slightly strange, even one that was as articulate and good-looking as this one. And yet she found herself wanting to prolong her contact with the robot.

"Have you received all the supplies you need?"

The robot turned slowly from her position looking down into the microscope, a blank look on her face. She turned her face toward Jane's, and now there was a small, chilly smile on her face, as if she were trying to get rid of a difficult guest.

It suddenly struck Jane that she was annoying and confusing the robot as much as the robot had annoyed and confused her. At the same moment, she realized that she'd never seen the robot truly smile. She was seized by the overwhelming desire to see Dr. Isles smile like she meant it.

The next second, she had dismissed this reflection. Robots were incapable of true emotion and therefore incapable of "truly smiling." The second after that, she had snapped back to attention as Dr. Isles proceeded to answer her question.

"I am still lacking the cord that allows me to interface with the photomultiplier tube in my GFAA setup. Perhaps you could procure one for me?"

"Oh, sure...I'll...um, I'll go talk to the director, I guess?" She had turned to leave—she had pushed the button to open the door—when Dr. Isles spoke again.

"What are you trying to do, Ms. Rizzoli?" When Jane turned back around to face the robot, Dr. Isles had her hand on her hip, and was looking—if Jane read her expression correctly—slightly exasperated. "I am perfectly capable of obtaining all the materials I need. The cord I mentioned, for instance, can easily be fashioned out by splicing an ordinary micro-USB cord with one of the standard attachments I brought with me. It would take a matter of minutes." The robot's brown eyes locked onto her own. She was no longer smiling; she looked intense, as if she were trying to figure something out.

"The inquiries you make are not particularly useful, and you seem not only incredibly awkward but also rather unenthusiastic about making them. This whole time, for instance," she paused, scanning the distance between herself and Jane, "you have remained at that distance of nearly seven yards, much closer to the door than to me."

"You haven't moved either," blurted Jane. "You could have come closer if you wanted to."

Dr. Isles looked amused. "Yes, but I have a reason to be where I am. I was working here when you interrupted me. You, on the other hand, are here to talk to me, not to the door—if I read your intentions correctly?"

Jane blushed furiously, and took four big steps forward until she was standing quite close to the robot. At this distance, Dr. Isles' eyes appeared to be more hazel than brown. Jane swallowed, her blush increasing. "Is that better?"

Dr. Isles looked impassive. "It doesn't change the fact that you came here to welcome me and you are doing very little to be welcoming. You don't seem to know anything about what I need. All you seem capable of is making awkward suggestions and invading my personal space."

"Hey, I can be welcoming! I'll be so welcoming you'll hardly remember you left home." Jane protested. "Let me take you to dinner tonight and prove it to you. 7 PM at the...Dirty Robber, okay? I'll meet you there." It was the longest speech she'd ever made to Dr. Isles, and as soon as she stopped talking she was overwhelmed with doubt. Robots didn't even need to eat! She had no idea what Dr. Isles' home life was like! And Dr. Isles was right; she was not a very welcoming person at the best of times, and she was even less so with regard to Dr. Isles. She felt hopelessly awkward in the face of the doctor's...perfection. And she hated being obliged to be nice to people. But before she could open her mouth to take it back, Dr. Isles was speaking.

"That sounds very nice, Ms. Rizzoli," she said calmly. "I would be delighted to join you this evening. The...'Dirty Robber,' you say?" Jane nodded mutely. "I will see you there." And then Dr. Isles smiled, a tiny, reserved smile that nevertheless appeared to be, for all intents and purposes, genuine.

"Great," Jane said roughly. "I'll...um, I'll see you then, I guess." She did her own rough approximation of a smile, and then she fled, covering the ground between herself and the door in something approaching a jog. Once outside the sliding glass doors to the lab, though, she couldn't resist looking back: Dr. Isles was still turned toward her, although her smile had disappeared, replaced by an expression that Jane couldn't read. She raised her hand briefly, as though to wave goodbye. Jane didn't respond to this gesture, although it haunted her for the rest of the afternoon, that and the peculiar smile that, for ten seconds, took up residence on Dr. Isles' face.


	4. Chapter 4

Predictably, as soon as she left the hospital, Jane started worrying. The Dirty Robber? What was she thinking? It was nowhere near fancy enough for Dr. Isles. For that matter, why had she decided to ask the doctor to dinner? It was such a crazy, stupid idea. The two of them would have nothing to talk about, or if they did, she would mortally offend the doctor once again. She wasn't sure she hadn't already offended the doctor by asking her to do something she literally could not do. Even if the robot wasn't actually capable of feeling emotions, it would be awkward to have her just sitting there watching Jane eat.

Stamping up the street toward the town hall, though, Jane realized that it was ridiculous to worry about hurting the doctor's feelings. She was just as incapable of feeling anything—gratitude, shock, distress—as she was of eating.

It did seem, however, that the doctor was extremely capable of mimicking human emotional responses. She might as well treat the doctor as a human, since she was clearly committed to acting as much like a human as possible. Why, Jane didn't know. Perhaps it was that "politeness" she was known for among fellow robots. A malfunctioning computer chip? Something that made her different from other robots Jane had interacted with. One way or another, by the time she got to her office, on the third floor, Jane was resigned to the idea. She was taking Dr. Isles to dinner.

For the rest of the afternoon, she tried to do research. But trawling the internet for reputable websites with information about the functioning of robots was boring and unprofitable. You'd think that there would be ample resources for a human interested in finding out how not to offend a robot, but either nobody knew anything about the workings of robots or the robot government was cracking down on information. Jane, remembering her cringe-inducing first meeting with Dr. Isles, could readily believe the latter hypothesis. What she didn't know was why.

She stretched out in her chair, making a noise of dissatisfaction. She was so unsuited to desk work it wasn't funny. She wanted to be out on the streets, or at least working on solving a mystery more important than why robots were the way they were. She wanted to be doing something, not waiting around to go to dinner with someone she didn't even like.

When she stepped outside of the building that evening, the sky was already dark, and the temperature, which had been low earlier, had dropped to eyelash-freezing depths. It took the whole drive home for Jane's car's heater to warm sufficiently for Jane's teeth to stop chattering. She felt frozen into her coat, shrunk into a smaller version of herself. As soon as she got home, she turned the heat up to 75 and stood in front of the one reliable heating vent in her apartment, hugging herself. She suddenly felt exhausted; this cold had a way of taking the life out of you. She considered canceling dinner, but dismissed that plan as even more embarrassing than showing up. Reluctantly, she trudged to her bedroom to find something a little dressier to wear.

Jane walked into the Dirty Robber a couple minutes after seven. She didn't see Dr. Isles right away, and for a moment she was sure the doctor had decided not to come, but then she spotted a perfectly coiffed head of blonde hair sticking over the top of one of the booths. She walked over and slid in across from Dr. Isles.

"Good evening, Ms. Rizzoli."

Jane had started to accept that Dr. Isles, outside the lab, was always flawlessly dressed. Tonight she wore a simple, dark, long-sleeved dress that somehow managed to look about a hundred times classier than what Jane had picked out (a fancier version of her everyday clothes: a button-down and a blazer with dress pants.)

"How was your afternoon, Dr. Isles?"

"It went very well, after your little interruption," said Dr. Isles. "Tell me, are you always that awkward around robots? You are the human-robot liaison for the city of Boston, correct? You must have some experience with robots."

Taken aback by the doctor's directness, Jane was grateful for the interruption of a waiter who came by to take their order. Jane ordered what she usually ordered: a burger and a beer. She was surprised when Dr. Isles ordered a cup of coffee. Surely she couldn't drink it? She was trying to think of how to ask this politely when Dr. Isles answered her unvoiced question. "I thought it would look odd not to order anything.

"But answer my question, Ms. Rizzoli. Are you always this awkward with robots?" She leaned forward, trapping Jane in her piercing gaze.

"Well, to be honest, I haven't had that much experience with...robots..." Jane admitted. "I've only been in this job for two weeks. You're the first robot I've ever interacted with in my official capacity as liaison." She sighed. "I mean, before this, I was a cop, so I've only really interacted with robots who've committed crimes, and I've had enough run-ins with that type that...I don't really trust robots." She rotated the beer that had just been delivered to the table in her hand, avoiding Dr. Isles' gaze.

"If you distrust robots, you must have some reason," said Dr. Isles, her voice utterly emotionless. "Did something happen to you to cause this uneasiness?" She didn't sound annoyed or angry; tentatively, Jane met her gaze. There was a long moment of silence during which Jane weighed what she was about to say: the advisability of telling this near-stranger her story, her chances of re-offending Dr. Isles. But there was something about the doctor that made Jane think that she could be trusted.

She wasn't sure who'd christened it the "Screwtape Incident," or why. The case hadn't involved anyone named Screwtape (of course it hadn't; what kind of name was Screwtape?). But a couple days after it was all over, Jane started hearing people referring to the Screwtape Incident, and then the name had caught on. When it became a matter of national interest, that's what they called it. Korsak had mentioned something about some writer, but Jane ignored it, as she did most literary nonsense.

It had begun a month ago—maybe before that. It's hard to tell when exactly these things start, when it would have been possible to disentangle yourself the whole mess. But that was when they'd begun to investigate a series of suspicious deaths in the West End. Over the course of a few weeks, they'd traced the murders to a resident of the neighborhood, a man known as Shady Jack. Jane and her partner, Frost, had staked out the place he was staying, and after a couple of days, they spotted him leaving the building. The man fit the description they'd gotten from neighbors; he was middle-aged, with thinning brown hair—unremarkable except for a slight limp.

Jane had confronted him, and when he tried to run—a stupid decision on his part, given the limp—she'd tackled him to the ground. They'd taken him in, questioned him. He seemed like your normal, run-of-the-mill serial killer, except for one detail. Shady Jack turned out to be a robot.

It was unclear how many humans had been involved in his plots, but it seemed he'd been able to convince some of his neighbors to assist him in the murder of several apparently random victims. Aside from the fact that he was a robot, it was no more horrifying than most of the cases that Jane worked, and she was somewhat surprised when it started getting massive amounts of attention from the media. Sure, the case was a mess, but once they'd locked the robot and his accomplices up, the murders stopped. There was a considerable faction of the population, however, who called for the government to send "Shady Jack" back to Canada. There was also a—very vocal—percentage who thought that Jack had committed crimes against humans and should be punished by humans (although there was no consensus as to how that would be accomplished.) The whole thing was a massive headache. Jane was grateful her role had been limited to arresting the guy—and discovering that he was a robot—but even at that she'd gotten some attention from the media. It was her untypically reticent answer to one reporter that brought her to the attention of the mayor, and subsequently to this job.

"I guess we're going to have to come to some sort of agreement with the government of Canada," she'd said on that particular occasion. "My first priority, now that we've stopped the murders, is maintaining the peaceful relations we've had for the last century. It would be a mistake to upset the balance over one criminal."

The thing that really sickened her about the whole thing was the prejudice. No, it wasn't quite that—it was the discovery that she was just as prejudiced as the next person. She found herself lying awake at night, wondering if she'd treated Shady Jack any differently after she knew he was a robot. Jane didn't like moral ambiguity. She was only concerned with bringing killers to justice. As far as she was concerned, her job should have ended as soon as Shady Jack was in custody, but somehow, the case had become tied to her name, and then her role as "the cop who dealt with robots" was cemented with her appointment to the role of liaison.

In the Dirty Robber a month later, Jane swallowed the last of her beer. "So now I'm forced to think about this shit all the time. I guess what I feel like is, sure, this guy was scum, but he was no worse than most of the types we pick up. He was almost...human." She paused, reflecting. "And something about that was incredibly creepy to me, that he managed to fool everyone. I don't really care whether its our government or his that punishes him for his crimes."

Jane lowered her head into her hands. She felt wound up from the tension of telling the story. "I'm not sure why I told you this. It's not anything that will help you with your case, or anything." But Dr. Isles looked very interested.

"The human mind is a fascinating thing, Ms. Rizzoli," she said. "I've always been of the opinion that robots can learn from the way your minds work."

"I guess." Jane looked doubtful. "You're the first person I've talked to anyone about this thing," she said eventually, the pause before 'person' so slight that only a robot could have detected it. "There's no reason it should've gotten under my skin the way it has. I just keep thinking...it's ridiculous, but what if...Shady Jack was able to fool everyone around him into thinking he was human so easily. What if...any of us...could secretly be...anything we wanted? The difference between robot and humans...what if it's not as definite as we think it is? " She laughed quietly at herself babbling incoherently to Dr. Isles. "I'm sorry, this doesn't make any sense. Just ignore me."

"You're troubled by the continued existence of evil, even in this day and age."

"Yeah, I guess, I mean, that's my job—that was my job." Jane rubbed her hands together meditatively. "Evil is one thing. I'm—it sounds terrible, but I'm used to evil. What I'm not used to is feeling like what I am can so easily be imitated. Some humans might be evil, but at least they're human, you know? I can't say I understand what makes a man want to disembowel a small child, but at least I feel like I can relate to the part of him that's still human. I don't want to have to worry about something that's so...alien."

"But are robots really alien? You could make the argument that we came from humans. We're as familiar to you as your own children."

Jane stared at the doctor, her face twisted involuntarily into a look of doubt. "I don't...how would you know what it's like to have children?" She immediately regretted taking this tone with the doctor, but before she could apologize, Dr. Isles had responded, calmly,

"It's true, I don't know what it's like to have children. But neither do you, Ms. Rizzoli, from what I understand."

Jane stared at the doctor.

"Cultural identity is a very complicated issue, I understand, one that many humans never get around to scrutinizing. Nor do most robots, for that matter," she added. "I apologize if my metaphor was inappropriate. Clearly, we both come from cultures that are profoundly uncomfortable with each others' existence. It is my great hope that your work as robot-human liaison will go some way toward ironing out the kinks in our cultures' relationship. Your willingness to entertain discussion of these sensitive issues is clearly a great asset."

Jane had nothing to say to this, but she was saved by the arrival of the bill. She paid it without protest from Dr. Isles, then set in on the edge of the table.

"Well," said Jane, feeling awkward. "I suppose I'll see you tomorrow. My boss is pretty set on the two of us developing a tight relationship. But, um, it was nice to eat dinner with you, Dr. Isles." She'd intended to lie, but realized as she was saying it that it was true: even though Dr. Isles hadn't eaten anything, and despite the rather heated discussion that had ended the meal, it had been a nice evening. "Sorry for, you know, overloading you with unnecessary information."

"No information is unnecessary, Ms. Rizzoli," Dr. Isles said quietly. "And you can call me Maura."

Jane was taken aback by this personal gesture. "Oh! Okay...Maura. You can call me Jane." And with that, Jane got up to leave, feeling that this very strange evening had reached an appropriately strange ending. She was stopped by a hand on her sleeve. She looked down at Dr. Isles, who had a serious look on her face. "Thank you for telling me your story, Jane," the robot said quietly.

Jane couldn't bring herself to do anything more than give the doctor a quizzical look. Leaving the bar, she felt an unexpected lightness. It had been a long time since she'd talked to anyone so...interesting. Someone that—she had to admit to herself—she liked.


	5. Chapter 5

The next morning, Jane went straight to the hospital. There was something about their conversation last night that made her feel more comfortable about Dr. Isles. She felt a positive urge to see her again, to find out how the research was going.

Checking into the hospital, and then the plague ward, and then finding Dr. Isles' lab, had become second nature. Jane barely noticed the eery quietness of the plague wards in her excitement to see Dr. Isles, an excitement that she realized had been growing slowly since dinner last night, when the doctor had implanted so many strange new ideas into her head. In the hallway outside the lab, Jane stopped to compose herself; she realized that she'd been walking more quickly than usual, and her heart rate had risen correspondingly. Then she pushed the button to open the door.

The lab was busier this morning, full of quiet electronic beeps from banks of machinery running experiments, but Dr. Isles was nowhere to be seen. Jane called her name, but there was no response. Around her, solutions titrated, screens filled up with numbers, and no life, human or robot, stirred.

After a moment, Jane moved further into the lab. It had been constructed in the shape of an L, with a short antechamber in which less sensitive work was undertaken and a longer back portion where Dr. Isles worked more directly with the virus. As Jane turned the corner, she noted several fume hoods, and one area at the very back of the lab that was cordoned off. Dr. Isles did not appear to be in this section of the lab either, but after a moment Jane noticed a door standing ajar in the middle of the wall. Jane moved toward it, gently pushed it farther open with her index finger, and looked around the door frame.

Her hunch was right; Dr. Isles was indeed in this room, which was tiny. It reminded her of her own office, which had previously been a broom cupboard, but instead of having a desk wedged into it, there was a cot set up along one wall, with a card table set up next to that, and a neat array of mechanical equipment lying on the table: a variety of cords, a couple of small hand-held computer screens, a couple of instruments that looked vaguely like very small screwdrivers. And in the middle of all this, wearing nothing more than a pair of panties and a bra, and with her back turned toward the door, was Dr. Isles.

She was clearly getting ready for her day; there was a set of scrubs laid out on the cot, and Jane could see the folded edge of something that looked a lot like pajamas peeking out from under the pillow. But before Jane had time to look at anything else, Dr. Isles turned around.

The two women gasped at almost the same instant, Dr. Isles out of surprise at finding an intruder and Jane out of surprise at the doctor's appearance.

She was incredibly lifelike, Jane thought with a shiver. If she didn't know better, she would have said that the naked flesh before her would be warm and soft to the touch; if she hadn't had better self-control, she would have reached out and touched it. Dr. Isles didn't blush, or exclaim; she merely tilted her head at Jane in an inquisitive way and looked amused as Jane, for what seemed like the thousandth time since the beginning of her acquaintance with Dr. Isles, turned bright red.

"I, uh, I called...your name..." she finally stuttered lamely. "I guess you didn't hear."

"No, I didn't," stated the doctor, turning to pull on her scrubs. "Sorry if that was awkward. I was just getting dressed," she said superfluously. "At any rate, it's good to see you, Jane. Even if you do insist on barging in while I'm changing."

"I'm so sorry about that, really," Jane said. "I don't know what I was thinking. I should have knocked."

"It makes no difference to me," Dr. Isles said, standing with her arms crossed in the middle of the room. She seemed preoccupied this morning, an impression that intensified as she brushed past Jane on her way into the lab, where she checked on the results filling up a computer screen before continuing, "I'm simply experimenting in human customs. I understand that it would make you uneasy if I were to walk around unclothed.

"Actually," she continued, as if letting Jane in on a secret, "it's a matter of some controversy that robots continue to be made in the shape of humans. Some of us say that it's pointless, that it's holding us back from what we might become. And since the physical separation of our societies rendered human contact infrequent, there is a sizable faction that has been lobbying for standardized non-humanoid appearance."

Jane had recovered from her embarrassment by now, and was fascinated by this insight into the politics of robot culture. "What do you think?" she asked Dr. Isles.

The doctor's previous monologue had been delivered with an air of abstraction, as if she understood that her actions needed explanation. Before she responded to Jane's question, she appeared to consider her words more carefully than she had ever done before. It was the first sign of hesitation Jane had ever seen about her, and it only endeared her to the doctor.

"I think...we still have a lot to learn from humans," said Dr. Isles eventually. "If existing in this form makes it easier for me to interact with you, then I am happy that I do. Of course, this opinion is quite unpopular where I come from, even with more open-minded robots." Jane, transfixed by this view into the doctor's mind, didn't dare to ask exactly how a robot could be considered open-minded, and after a minute she was forced to remind herself that the doctor couldn't technically have a mind, but she stopped thinking about that because it made her head hurt, and because she wanted to focus what the doctor was saying. "As I said before, many robots believe that our continued...mimicry of human appearance is holding us back from some glorious, unbounded future.

"But if we don't understand where we come from, how can we understand where we're going? Is the only purpose of a robot's life the perpetuation of some rigid, sterile ideal of efficiency? I'm intrigued by the—admittedly often futile—attempts humans have made to find 'meaning' in their lives: the creation of art, the exploration of the subconscious. Love." For a moment the robot wore an expression of longing, and then, as though remembering the way in which this story must end, her expression hardened.

"There are very few opportunities for robots to study these attempts. The closest we get to studying human culture is an abstract interest in biology, which the government continues to fund for reasons I don't understand even as I am grateful for them. My decision to study human biology was extremely unusual. Studying medicine...was considered insane, pointless, suspicious. Why would I want to try to understand humans? To help humans?" She sighed, as if her efforts in this respect had failed too many times to count. "Humans don't want the help of a robot doctor." Now she sounded bitter. "They find me creepy, inhuman. Alien. And they're right, of course. I'm merely a facsimile of a human, and not a very good one at that."

"I don't know—" Jane started to say, but Dr. Isles cut her off.

She'd been about to say, "I think you make a pretty good human." The effect Dr. Isles had had on her a moment before, when she'd walked in on her changing, was not the reaction of a human to a poor copy, and the sympathy she was feeling for Dr. Isles now was real, as though she were hearing the story of a human trapped within a robot's body. She was beginning to realize that Dr. Isles was more than just...what was it? A chunk of silicon and wires. But before she could fully articulate this thought, Dr. Isles was talking again.

"That was the real reason I volunteered to come help out," she said. "I turned to virology when I realized that humans would never accept me as their doctor. And it turned out to be a good decision for other reasons. Robots can accept virology. We understand viruses. And virology turns humans into," she waved a perfectly-articulated hand, "figures, statistics. Not flesh and blood. Not everything that threatens us most.

"And when there came a time that my specialty was exactly what the humans needed," she continued, turning to look at Jane with a musing look in her eye and a slight smile on her face, "I felt something like...joy. Finally, I would be able to give something back. I would feel like I was a part of human society. I would be one small step closer to understanding..." For a moment there was silence between the two women. Jane waited for Dr. Isles to finish her sentence, to explain what, exactly, it was she wanted to understand, but she never did. Jane was beginning to forget that so much of this was impossible: robots didn't think, they didn't have feelings, they didn't have minds.

"It was an illusion, of course, as so many things in my life are illusions," said Dr. Isles eventually, and Jane, lost in thought, jumped. "I am incapable of feeling human emotions, although I have become proficient at—" she turned to look at Jane, as though appealing to her, "I have become proficient at pretending, at using the language of human emotions to express myself. Most of the time, that does not seem like a problem. But—" and here she stopped, looking down at her own hands, the slick black surface of the lab bench they rested on.

"But sometimes you feel the lack," said Jane quietly.

"Yes." The doctor paused. "I don't know why I am the way I am. Why I want to feel things, and why I can't." Again she turned to Jane, her eyes large and shining. "Tell me, Jane, do you think your life has a purpose?"

Jane didn't usually feel capable of articulating her lack of satisfaction with her own life. It wasn't something she thought about a lot, actually, the way her life could have been different, or better, or what it would have meant to do something different with it. She hadn't been raised to think about things that way: as long as she did her duty to her family and her country, she didn't feel the need to probe her feelings about her own life.

Did her life have a purpose? It had used to; her purpose had been finding bad guys, solving mysteries, helping people who were in pain. Until now, the job of robot-human liaison hadn't offered any kind of replacement for that sense of drive and purpose, and she was beginning to realize that her life was empty in other ways too. After she was gone, who would remember her? Who did she spend her days with? Who loved her?

Something in her face must have changed to reflect her internal conflict, and now that the doctor was focused on her human companion's reactions rather than driven by some strange need to tell her own story, she realized that Jane was uncomfortable with something about their conversation. Instead of listening to her painful thoughts about her own purpose, she changed the subject. It was as if Jane was a sample of something precious that she didn't want to use up.

"I must apologize, Jane. I'm sure you came here to hear about the progress I've made on A99, not about my personal problems! Let me update you on the situation."

As Dr. Isles turned away to pick up a clipboard filled with sheets of data, Jane felt a stab of disappointment.


	6. Chapter 6

"I've made more progress in the area of method of dissemination than in finding a cure, I'm sorry to say." , who had been leaning against the lab bench as she ruminated on her own strange desire to feel human emotions, now straightened up and was looking as unemotional, as thoroughly professional, as she always did. "As I mentioned before, this virus has been classified simply as A99, implying that it's carried by arthropods, which as I'm sure you can appreciate is absurd at this time of year in this climate."

"Wait, wait," Jane interrupted. "Arthropods?"

"Insects." Dr. Isles resumed her monologue. "Nevertheless, the disease was designated A99 because it met the criteria: it was viral, it invariably presented with massive internal bleeding, and Jacksonian seizures were witnessed in many cases. Regardless of how it has been spread, it seems likely to me that this was orchestrated; outbreaks of viral hemorrhagic fever are usually sporadic and unpredictable. So far, this virus has been localized in the Northeastern United States, and it has been going strong for several weeks."

Jane interrupted again. "So you think that somebody is intentionally making all these people sick?"

"The outbreak pattern is consistent with a virus introduced into a population intentionally." Jane felt a surge of nausea that was matched by a completely involuntary surge of excitement. It was a case—the largest murder case she'd ever been involved in. But that was inappropriate—she wasn't a detective anymore. Her job was to listen to Dr. Isles, even if she didn't quite understand half of what the doctor was saying, not to do anything about it. Come to think of it, who was she supposed to report this information to? Shouldn't Dr. Isles be reporting all of this to some kind of medical team? Her thoughts carried on in this direction for a minute before she reluctantly returned her attention to the stream of information coming from Dr. Isles' mouth.

"As I mentioned earlier, the usual natural reservoirs involved in this type of virus are virtually nonexistent in this region at this time of year, leading me to conclude that whoever is disseminating this virus is using a fabricated reservoirs. It would be relatively straightforward to transform a population of simple flying or crawling robots into a vector for the disease.

"What I can't tell you is the origin of the disease. It is extremely unlikely that the primitive robots used to disseminate the virus evolved their pathogenic qualities on their own. It is much more likely that someone developed the virus with the intent to distribute it via these carriers. Furthermore, VHFs are largely dependent on their hosts for survival—"

"VHFs?"

Dr. Isles finally stopped her expertly-delivered monologue (really, whoever had taught her to present her findings as if she were being interviewed on the seven-o'clock news was incredibly talented, Jane thought briefly) and looked exasperated. "Viral hemorrhagic fevers, which is what this is. As I was saying?"

It took Jane a minute to process the expectant look on Dr. Isles' face. "Oh, please continue, doctor."

"Whoever created this virus would need to constantly be renewing the population of robot vectors in the population."

"So the bastards must still be in the area," Jane murmured to herself, already thinking about the best way to track "the bastards" down.

"That seems probable, yes." Dr. Isles shuffled the papers on the lab bench before her, eventually picking out a diagram from among the lists and charts. "This is a sketch of a possible vector, although there's nothing to say exactly what it would look like. This is simply the most efficient design for a simple insect-like robot." Jane took the drawing, examined it dazedly. "I want to emphasize, Jane, the difficulty of tracking down the source of this virus simply on the basis of their using this particular type of vector. Nanites are not difficult to obtain, I understand; you could probably buy a package of very simplistic ones at a hardware store."

"Jesus, why do they let them sell these things..." Jane said to herself.

"Do you want me to answer your question, Jane?" said Dr. Isles after a moment. "I've made an extensive study of the history of robots and our relationship with humans."

"Oh! No, no, sorry for interrupting. So once they've...distributed this virus using these tiny robots, what can we do? Besides arresting them," she added.

"As far as treatment goes, most VHFs are treated with drugs that interfere with RNA replication, but that kind of treatment takes a very long time, and this virus—as we have witnessed—takes a very short time to dispatch the infected. The most efficient way to combat this virus, in my opinion, is going straight to the source. Shut down the means of distribution, and we can try to develop a way to lessen the intensity of the virus' effects. Beyond that," she shrugged. "I don't have any good answers for you, Jane. At least not yet."

Jane nodded absently, lost in thought. She had gotten deep into a daydream in which she, Frost, and Korsak were tracking down the source of the evil killer robot insects before she realized that that was no longer her job, and that it hadn't even really been her job even when she was a detective. Then she realized that Dr. Isles was no longer talking but was looking expectantly at her. At a loss, Jane said the first thing that came into her head:

"Thanks for going to dinner with me last night."

If the doctor was thrown by this extremely abrupt change of subject, she didn't show it. "It was my pleasure, Jane. I enjoyed getting to know you a little better." She smiled politely.

"And thank you for all the work you've done so far. I'll be sure to get this to my colleagues at the Police Department. If someone really is infecting people, it's their job to track them down."

"You realize, Jane," Dr. Isles said respectfully after a moment, "that there is a high probability that a virus of this level of infectiousness and lethality was produced and disseminated by robots, don't you? In that case, both our governments would be dependent on your efforts as liaison to facilitate the arbitration of this case. This is still your job, and it is a job that I realize you probably will not relish. If the press was upset over the murder of five humans by one robot, think of the explosion if a robot turns out to be behind these thousand deaths. Not," she added hastily, "that that is necessarily the case."

"But you think it's likely," said Jane.

"I'm mostly concerned about the stress such a situation would create for you." Jane stared warily at the doctor. It was not a reaction she would have expected out of a robot, but strangely, it didn't surprise her, coming from Dr. Isles.

"Can I ask you something, Maura?" The doctor nodded. "Why do you care? I mean-" she hurried to add, "why do you care what happens to me?"

There was a long silence.

"You'll notice that I didn't actually said I cared about you." Jane was surprised and delighted to find that Dr. Isles was looking flustered. "I merely said I was concerned about the stress such a situation might create for you. I am well aware that humans—like robots—do not deal well with excessive stress, and after our discussion last night I suspected that you would be uncomfortable with the idea of being responsible for dealing with the fallout of what would amount to an international incident. As I mentioned last night, I simply want the relationship between our respective countries to be a peaceful one."

"But you want to be able to care about someone, don't you," said Jane. "You said earlier that you felt your lack of emotions. … I'm right, aren't I!"

Slowly, improbably, Dr. Isles began to blush. "Maybe."

"Robots can't lie, Maura," teased Jane. "You're starting to care about me." But this time the doctor was silent, and gradually Jane realized her mistake in making fun of the doctor's secret aspirations. Feeling awkward, she cleared her throat. "Well, um, thanks for the info about...the virus...if I can help you with anything, just let me know." Once again, she found herself fleeing the doctor's presence, and once again she found herself being called back.

"Wait, Jane." Already at the sliding doors of the lab, Jane turned back toward the doctor, her heart beating abnormally fast. Dr. Isles appeared to have recovered from her embarrassment and was looking serious. "I don't know why I was dishonest earlier. I don't know what it's like to...care about somebody but..." Jane waited with bated breath. "Will you come back tomorrow, Jane? I might have made some more progress by then."

"Progress?"

"On a cure for the infection, Jane."

"Of course." Jane hastily rearranged her expression, into something more professional. "Until tomorrow, Dr. Isles." The doctor smiled weakly in return. Jane pushed the button to open the sliding doors and left the lab.

As soon as she was out in the hallway Jane gave way to confusion. What had happened back there? Had Dr. Isles—Maura—had Maura admitted she cared about her? Surely that was impossible. How could that have happened? And did she care about Maura? About that strange, frigid robot?

She stopped in the middle of the hallway, pressed a hand to her forehead. It seemed impossible, even disgusting, a human starting to care about a robot, but then what about the guys and their cars? Humans were perfectly capable of feeling pride in objects, of worrying about their safety...why shouldn't she become attached to Dr. Isles?

Well, there were perfectly good reasons why not: it was inappropriate, for one; they were colleagues. Pretty soon, Maura would develop a cure and then she would go back to Canada forever; that was inevitable. Jane hastily stifled the disappointment that arose in her chest at the idea of Maura leaving, going back to a society that couldn't possibly appreciate her quirks, her originality...she had been standing in the middle of the hallway for several minutes, she realized, with a look of distress on her face, and as a nurse turned the corner she started to walk again, slowly at first but then more briskly, until she was practically jogging down the hallways that lead toward the exit.

Thoughts swirled around Jane's head as she strode through the sliding doors at the entrance of the hospital, but at the bottom of them a hard fact remained: being around Maura made her happy.


	7. Chapter 7

Several days after their discussion about possible methods of dissemination, Jane and Maura were in the lab again. Maura was explaining something that seemed very important, but Jane was having trouble paying attention.

Jane had noticed, from the first time she saw Maura in a lab, that the robot got strangely animated when she was working, almost as though the lab were her natural environment. Today, however, Maura seemed especially excited. Normally, Maura held herself very straight, and moved somewhat stiffly; today, she leaned toward Jane, she practically hugged the lab benches, she waved her arms in the air in big, demonstrative gestures. Her eyes sparkled; her lips remained curved in a half-smile as she explained whatever it was she was explaining to Jane.

Jane was dimly aware that Maura's explanation seemed to be reaching a climax, but she was primarily engaged in examining the doctor's outfit. Ordinarily, Maura wore a lab coat over her scrubs, but today she had forgone the lab coat, and Jane was particularly interested in the way in which her scrubs somehow managed to cling to Maura's curves in a way that was surely not typical of medical scrubs: the waist of her top hugged the robot's waist in a way that took Jane's breath away. Somewhere on her eyes' progress from the v-neck of the scrubs to the place where the powder-blue top met the powder-blue bottom, however, she became aware that Maura had stopped talking. Moments after that, she became aware of the pressure the doctor's hand was exerting against her shoulder, and she looked up guiltily to meet the doctor's brown eyes, still shining with the excitement of whatever new development had animated her in the first place.

A blank look passed over Maura's face for a fraction of a second, as if she were processing something, and then she moved forward with amazing swiftness, put her other hand behind Jane's head, and kissed her on the mouth, delicately but firmly. For a moment, Jane was unable to process what was happening to her, but then she realized that Maura's lips on hers felt...right, as if this had been the thing she was waiting for. Maura's lips were dry, but soft, and they tasted oddly of cinnamon. A moment later, she realized what she was doing and jerked away from the robot, who was caught slightly off-balance. "What did you do that for?" she asked, her voice shaky.

"You looked like you wanted to kiss me, so I kissed you." The doctor looked infuriatingly calm.

"Excuse me?"

"I confronted you with some rather spectacular news, but you didn't seem to be paying attention to what I was saying, so I put my hand on your shoulder to jolt you out of your reverie and to ascertain your physical condition. I then noticed that your heart rate had increased, that you were breathing somewhat more heavily than you usually do, that your skin was flushed and that your pupils were dilated. I then analyzed your actions toward me since we met, and I concluded that they evinced a fair degree of-probably subconscious-attraction. And then I utilized a fairly new program I've been developing designed to ascertain the emotional states of humans based on their facial expressions, and I concluded that you were probably thinking about kissing me. Was I wrong?"

"No! I mean-yes!" Jane was confused. She buried her head in her hands, trying to think. True, the thought of kissing Maura had never even entered her head, before a moment ago, but now it seemed to have taken up permanent residence there.

A moment earlier, had she been...checking Maura out? And that time with the door...and when she walked in on Maura changing, what she felt had not just been embarrassment...and then she saw once again Maura face just before she kissed her, and her stomach turned over, and she knew, with a sinking sense of finality, that Maura was right once again. Jane was attracted to her. She wanted to kiss her again.

Maura rested a gentle hand on Jane's shoulder. She looked concerned. "Is something wrong, Jane? Have I acted inappropriately?" Jane had to laugh at that.

"Well, that was certainly a bit...sudden...Can you tell me, Maura, how many actual humans have you ever actually interacted with?"

Maura was silent. Finally, she said, "Are you implying that I don't know what I'm doing?"

"No," sighed Jane, although she kind of was. "I'm saying that I don't know what I'm doing. Neither of us knows what we're doing. Listen, I'm sorry I wasn't paying attention earlier-"

"-And I'm sorry if I acted untowardly," said Maura.

"-But weren't you telling me something important?"

"Oh yes, of course." Maura' expression changed subtly from concerned to professional. "I believe I may have found a cure for the virus, or at least what may turn out to be a cure. It's being tested now; I should have the results by the end of the day."

"What?!"

"It's not a particularly innovative technique," continued Maura, oblivious to Jane's excitement. "As I mentioned a while ago, most viral hemorrhagic fevers are treated using drugs that interfere with RNA replication, but that method has unfortunate side effects and generally takes a period of weeks or months, which we didn't have. I speeded the process up and I tried to reverse some of the potential side effects. All my data says it should work."

"That's amazing!" Jane felt an overwhelming urge to hug the other woman. "Can I...hug you? You know, in celebration?"

"Of course."

As they stood in the middle of the lab, Jane's arms wrapped around Maura, a hundred thoughts rushed through her head. She was amazed and overjoyed that there might be an end in sight to this plague. She wondered how the police department was doing with the job of tracking down the source of the virus, and she itched to be out in the field with them. But at the same time, she was thinking how nice it was to be here with Maura, with someone who listened and talked and was passionate about things. And underneath that was the new awareness of the feelings she had for Maura, as yet unexplored.

After a minute, though, she realized she should probably let Maura go. She smiled awkwardly at the other woman.

"So what are you up to today? Just waiting around to hear the results of the tests?"

"That's essentially what I'm doing," said Maura, smiling. "I'm glad you came around, though. I was hoping for someone to celebrate with."

"Yeah, of course! This is really exciting!" said Jane. "So...tell me how you figured it out." She took a seat at one of the stools tucked under the lab bench.

"Well," said Maura, with the look of someone with a story to tell, "the problem with most extant RNA-inhibiting drugs is that they damage the red blood cells, leading to anemia. I was able to work with one such drug and target it more specifically at the virus."

Jane nodded. She had no idea what Maura was talking about, but that was okay; it was a pleasure just to see Maura excited about something. Once again she was struck by the change from the sardonic, cold, distant robot who had arrived at the beginning of the week and the doctor in front of her now. She tried to look like she was paying attention as the stream of jargon continued.

"Have you heard from the police department, Jane?" Maura asked finally.

"What? Oh, no, not yet." Jane was instantly jolted out of her relaxed state-watching Maura talk put her into a sort of reverie-back into the tension of the last few weeks. She'd called her contacts at the police department with the information Maura had given her several days before, but since then she'd heard nothing from them. Her calls inquiring about the progress of the case were met with evasive answers. She could tell that her former colleagues were tired. She wasn't sure how to interpret that: were they exhausted from following leads all day? Were they (Jane shuddered) getting sick? She hoped it was the former. "I'm sure they'll call me when they have a lead."

"I hope so. You look tense. Stress is very bad for the human immune system, you know, Jane," said Maura.

"So what am I supposed to do? Sit around without a care in the world while other people do all the work?" Jane demanded. "It's hard enough not to drive over there right now and help those guys. But no, that wouldn't be "appropriate" for the robot-human liaison. And they hardly ever return my calls, anyway," she admitted. "This isn't my fight. I'm not the hero of this mess."

"But I don't think you really wanted to be a hero," said Maura. "I think you wanted to be helpful. And you have been."

"How? All I've done is distract you from your work! I don't even understand what you're saying half the time! I'm too dumb to be of any use to you."

"That's not what I mean. Having you around...has been a reminder of what I'm working toward. What I'm working for. And I also think..." Maura paused, as if she were unsure of how Jane would take what she was about to say. "I think that you've gotten a lot more comfortable around robots-well, at least one robot-during the past few days, and in your job that's invaluable. You're going to be a more helpful liaison as a result of your interactions with me." She smiled at Jane. "But you're not going to be a very helpful liaison if you worry yourself sick over things you can't control."

"No, you're right, it's just...I wish I could control them. I wish this were over. But..." she looked consideringly at Maura. "I almost kind of don't. I don't want to think about you leaving. It's been...nice having you around this week. It's been really nice." She swallowed. Her heart beat faster. She reached out, feeling incredibly awkward, and took Maura's hand. "Thank you. For coming here. And being...my friend. And..." she wanted to say, "thank you for kissing me," but she wasn't sure how, so she settled for, "you're amazing."

"Oh, Jane, I'm going to miss you too," said Maura, squeezing Jane's hand. "I've never met anyone quite as...lively as you." She smiled again, and it made Jane's heart skip.

"I remember when you first got here," said Jane quietly. "You never smiled, it seemed like. It's so nice to see you smile. Why don't you stay here?" she said, mentally attaching "with me." With me, with me, that's what she meant; stay here with me forever, let me figure out what these complicated feelings mean, but stay.

She was working up the nerve to say that, she had taken in a breath in order to say that, but then her cell phone rang, and the moment was gone. She dropped Maura's hand in order to answer the phone.

The voice on the other end was unfamiliar, but after a moment Jane realized that it was her boss. Then she realized what her boss was saying: that Jane should come into the office, because there was a major diplomatic crisis. The police department had found the source of the virus; it had been, without a shadow of a doubt, spread by a group of robots registered with the government. The media had somehow gotten ahold of this information, and now the city government-and Jane-had a situation on its hands.

Jane hung up in a daze. Maura was looking inquiringly at her. "Listen, Maura, I'm really sorry, I have to go..." Jane was already on her way out of the door. This was her job, this was the next challenge, this was what she had to do, but as she looked behind her at Maura, standing all alone in the lab, she wished fiercely that she didn't have to do it, that she could stay here with Maura forever.


	8. Chapter 8

"Okay, I'll let you get back to it. Yes, I'll be polite." Jane hung up the phone on her boss-his name was Steve-with a grimace; his voice was so loud, so grating, it almost made her miss the days when the sole reminder of his presence was the occasional post-it note on her desk. Jane's boss had become an all-too-present reminder of the way things had changed over the two days since the news of the source of the virus had reached the media. Her phone rang constantly now: if it wasn't her boss telling her about some new crisis to navigate, it was a member of the press asking for an interview, or, worse, an enraged, self-righteous citizen seeking justice. Jane felt completely unqualified to deal with any of it.

Thinking about her most recent vengeance-hungry phone call, she gritted her teeth in frustration. The woman on the other end of the line had begun by asking Jane, loudly and hysterically, what she planned to do about "those goddamn robots." Jane was completely at a loss for what to tell her. She couldn't tell the woman what she honestly thought, which was that her anger, and her terror, was misplaced, although she understood where it came from. That was what she wanted to say to the woman: "I understand where you're coming from, I've felt like that, the idea that we have these creatures in our midst with completely different brains and morals and needs is terrifying to me, but we can't do anything about it right now, we are so woefully underprepared to understand this situation there is no way we can even start to think how to deal with it." All they wanted was justice. All Jane wanted was justice. But she didn't know what justice would look like. And she knew that answer wouldn't satisfy anyone. So she usually issued a polite statement: "Ma'am, please try to stay calm. We are doing all we can to bring the ringleaders to justice."

She didn't know what to say at the press conferences, beyond the same bland assurances she used on the phone, statements so meaningless her callers usually hung up in disgust. She couldn't vilify the robots; she couldn't even talk about them without remembering the recent reports of great upswings in violence against them. (She'd seen the aftermath of one particularly violent attack; the robot's processors had been burned out, and then someone had simply beaten his frame until it had looked an awful lot like the corpses of the first plague victims, molten and twisted in an almost organic way.) Jane understood, on one level, that pain held no terrors for robots. She understood that the murder of a robot was probably entirely different from the murder of a human. At the same time, she had to wonder about the person who felt so much rage that they were able to inflict such harm on what looked so much like a person. What was, she was beginning to feel, a person.

She had her first video conference with the president of Canada in ten minutes, a conference that had been put off for far too long (by the robots, of course). With every passing minute, Jane became more certain that the robots' government was being evasive because they had commissioned the attacks on Boston. That would mean the start of a war, surely. Jane was completely unqualified to deal with this discussion, let alone the bloody aftermath. Why wasn't anyone here with her to take this call? She wasn't even qualified to do anything about the crisis, her sole function was to act as a mouthpiece for the government and a go-between for its dealings with the robots. But the police had their hands full, and her boss was away at the moment, giving yet a press conference. He was the head of publicity for the City of Boston, a position that seemed absurdly insufficient in the face of the chaos that was threatening to envelop them. And the mayor was...where was the mayor again? For an instant, Jane's panicking brain delivered her an image of the mayor under sedation in a hospital bed, a victim of the plague. And that image made her think of the plague ward, and then, with a thrill of embarrassment, of the woman who'd taken up residence there for four days.

She had done a terrible job of dealing with Maura Isles. Every thought of the impeccably stylish, incomprehensibly complex robot sent her into paroxysms of shame. That wasn't quite right: every thought of her own behavior around the robot sent her into paroxysms of shame. It was useless wondering why she'd gotten attached to the robot: Jane had let herself get too isolated in the past few months. Maura Isles was simply a skilled manipulator of human emotions. Jane had let herself get tricked into a dead-end infatuation, and the only possible result was shame.

One question remained, however, and in the depths of her self-chastisement she came back to it again and again. What possible motivation could Maura Isles have had to make Jane fall in love with her? Jane was assuming, of course, that that was Maura's intended goal, because the alternative-that Jane had fabricated the entire thing-was too crushing. And so she stopped thinking about Maura, or she tried to. It wasn't that hard, actually; she was so busy. Maura Isles hung at the corner of her day, weighing on her bones like a lingering cold and occasionally intruding into her thoughts with a pang like a pulled muscle.

A message flashed across the screen in front of her; the robots were calling. Enough of these unhelpful thoughts. Jane rearranged the papers on the desk: a file containing all the police reports on human-robot violence, a copy of Maura's report on the "origin and dissemination of an artificially engineered viral haemorrhagic fever," a copy of City Hall's most recent official statement on the status of the investigation and prosecution. She answered the call.

"Good afternoon, Ms. Rizzoli." The president's voice was stern, measured.

"Good afternoon, Mr. President."

"I'll get right to the point, since I understand you're under a lot of pressure right now." Jane had a feeling that that was where the President wanted her. He seemed smugly satisfied that Jane was, despite her best efforts, looking a bit discomposed. Or maybe Jane was reading too much into his blank expression? She seemed to be very good at that these days. "We have been fully informed of the situation in your country." (By whom? Jane wondered. Did she have to start worrying about robot spies now?) "Rest assured we are prepared to offer you any aid that seems useful in this trying time. It seems to me, however, that given current theories circulating regarding the origin of the virus infecting your populace, any contact between our government and yours might be imprudent. My only suggestion at this time, Ms. Rizzoli, is that all robots registered in your country should be instructed to return to their homeland, and soon."

"But that will just be seen as an admission that robots-that your government-were responsible for the plague! Are you trying to start a war, Mr. President?"

"Of course not. But I am concerned about potential backlash against my fellow robots."

"Your fellow robots are now citizens of the United States. It's our decision whether or not to let them stay here. And frankly, I don't see any reason to force them to relocate."

The president lifted an eyebrow. "You realize that such relocation would not actually cause them any discomfiture? We are robots, Ms. Rizzoli, not humans: infinitely adaptable, infinitely rational." He paused; Jane turned the phrase over in her mind. Surely there was something wrong with it, but she couldn't figure out what. "But if you wish for the registered robots to remain in your country, there is nothing I can do about it. It goes without saying that I have no opinion on the matter." (Bullshit, thought Jane. You were trying to start a war.) "That is my only suggestion, Ms. Rizzoli. I trust Dr. Isles was helpful to you?" The name went through Jane like an electric shock.

"Y-yes-of course. She was invaluable."

"Good. And now that you have a handle on the virus, all that remains is to...manage the public." The president smiled a thin, humorless smile.

"Yeah. Got any tips?"

"I'm sorry, Ms. Rizzoli; dissent is something we almost never have to deal with."

"That must be very boring for you." Jane couldn't prevent a touch of bitterness sneaking into her tone. Internally, she wondered: "almost" never? "Well, Mr. President, thank you for your time."

The robot inclined his head slightly; his image disappeared from the screen.

Jane leaned back in her chair and sighed in frustration. Robots were so complicated. There were so many layers of subtext she hadn't picked up on in that conversation. She still didn't have any idea of how to keep the terrified, battered population of Boston from rioting against resident robots. And her fears that this attack had somehow originated with the robot government hadn't been calmed; after this video call, she was pretty sure that it had been a prelude to open war between their countries. But why? Was there really so much resentment between the robots and the humans? Her mind flashed back to the image of the murdered robot down at BPD. Human resentment toward robots she could understand, especially now: the fear of the almost-human, the fear of the invincible other in our midst. The fear of the retaliation by the used against their oppressors.

But had humans really acted as the oppressors in the human-robot relationship? She could understand the human perspective, more or less, but what possible motivation did robots have for wanting to get rid of humans? Her imagination sprinted through several different situations, including the probable outcome of a robot-human war. It wasn't pretty.

There was somebody who could help her, who might be able to provide some insight into the years of tension between robots and humans. Jane swallowed the queasy feeling that rose in her stomach at the thought of seeing Maura Isles again, after having made such a fool of herself hardly two days ago.

She couldn't explain to herself, let alone Maura, why she'd been unable to go back. It was pride, that was all, hurt pride at having betrayed her own emotional weakness and instability. Her emotions had gotten away from her, she'd made a stupid mistake, and now she was too proud to face the consequences. It was especially embarrassing because the person who had witnessed her mistake wasn't capable of making them herself and couldn't possibly have any sympathy for her. Once again, she worried, with a jolt, what Maura must think of her and her baffling behavior.

She also felt unprepared for another encounter with Maura; she wasn't sure she'd be able to control herself around the robot. The stress of holding herself together in the face of both her own out-of-control emotions and the public's confused, angry outcry was too much, even in private. If she was on the brink of tears here, alone in her office, what could possibly ensue when she found herself in the company of the only person who had shown her any affection in months?

There was nowhere else to go, though, so Jane pulled herself together, gathered her things, and went out to her car. She drove the half mile to the hospital feeling jittery, and checked in at the front desk. She took the elevator up to Maura's lab, adrenaline coursing through her veins.

But when she reached the glass doors of Maura's lab, her stomach sank. The room was dark, there was no hint of movement among the shrouded lab equipment, and the door wouldn't open when she pressed the button. Maura was gone.


End file.
